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STOCKHOLM ROCK OUT -part II

Stockholm Rock Out is a new rock festival in Sweden which is now in its second year. When the first edition of the festival took place on May 1st it was almost disastrous because the giant volcano clouds forced most of the headliners to cancel their appearances but this time all measures worked well without any unexpected problems or last minute changes. By European standards, the band line up in Stockholm Rock Out was somewhat extravagant. The list included many great bands which haven’t been here in ages, like Keel and Tuff, and there were also some unique one off performances like the one with Great White w/ Paul Shortino on vocals and the farewell show of Zinny J. Zan. Like the organizers advertised, this festival is indeed organized for music lovers by music lovers.

Kingdom Come was originally formed in North America by German born vocalist Lenny Wolf following his critically acclaimed but commercially untenable band Stone Fury. The original line-up consisted of Wolf, guitarists Danny Stagg and Rick Steier, bassist Johnny B. Frank and current Scorpions drummer James Kottak. The band was soon signed to Polydor Records and they released their eponymous debut album, produced by Bob Rock, in 1988. With the impact of the huge radio hits ‘Get It On’ and ‘What Love Can Be’ the album went gold. Later on the same year the band finished the U.S Monsters of Rock which also included such names as Metallica, Scorpions and headliners Van Halen. At that point everything looked very promising for the bands future. The next year the band returned to the studio, now with Keith Olsen, and as a result band released their sophomore album IN YOUR FACE. Although the album still did pretty well it failed to reach its predecessor’s success and the whole band split up in late 1989. Lenny decided to continue under the name Kingdom Come and the band’s third album HANDS OF TIME was released in late 1990. Despite the undoubted strength of the album, the interest level in the band had declined sharply and HANDS OF TIME failed to chart. Kingdom Come’s career at Polydor Records came to an end. Lenny made another attempt to return, now with all German line up and a new record deal with WEA. In 1993 with the heavier album BAD IMAGE was released but didn’t got too much interest outside of Germany. 1995 saw the release of the experimental TWILIGHT CRUISER album and MASTER SEVEN was released the following year. Although the band hasnâ€™t been much in headlines outside of Germany after the mid 90’s they still have been around. The band has since then released four studio albums, the latest one AIN’T CRYING FOR THE MOON came out in 2006, and they have done some touring. Recently the band joined forces with U.S band Dokken and together they did a co-headline European tour titled “Defenders of Rock”. I managed to catch Lenny and current guitarist Eric Foerster just before their show in Copenhagen and here’s the latest update from the world of Kingdom Come.